 Welcome to New America. I am Peter Bergen, and we're here to discuss a new paper, an assessment of variation in national processes of defining and designating terrorist groups, which is published today and is available at the bottom of your screen. We're talking to two of the authors of the report, David Sturman, Melissa Sileck-Virk. David is a senior policy analyst at New America, Melissa is a fellow at New America. And we're also honored to have Ambassador Edmund Fitten-Brown, former ambassador to Yemen from Britain, and also he ran the UN Monetary Cell for Taliban and al-Qaeda. And so we will start with Melissa, who's going to give an overview and we'll go to David and then we'll have Ambassador Fitten-Brown comment on the report. Melissa. Great. Thank you so much, Peter. So to begin with, this assessment aims to map various approaches to national designation practices and also help to enable future analysis of variations in designation practices that impact policy efforts by social media companies and governments alike. And so we formulated our list of countries based on encyclopedia Britannica, which gave us 196 countries. And everything was open source from government websites to news coverage, governmental and non-governmental assessments and review of counterterrorism law. And so, of course, with this process we identified some limitations. So when performing a global analysis, this process yielded several limitations such as language barriers, local knowledge barriers, and in order to navigate that process, as an English language focus team, we contracted supplemental research from individuals proficient in Spanish, French and Arabic to kind of fill in those any perceived gaps. In addition, that means it's possible that several countries may have a designation list, but we could not find it. So where we had breadcrumbs possibly leading us to more conclusive lists, for example, like in the Netherlands, we reached out to contacts and relevant government ministries to ask our questions and confirm interpretations of media reports or government documents. And so David will speak about this a bit more. So as you might suspect, in our research we found that different countries have different protocols for assessing and designating terrorist groups. And so some included sanctions of specific people or terrorist entities. And every practice of designation is different. So vast generalizations cannot be made about these processes. These are all political factors that must be taken into account as to why some countries designate specific groups and that others do not. And so there are also some key terms throughout a report that I think are worth noting. The term designation is used for countries that have labeled at least one group as a terrorist entity, done so by either official government statement or unofficial media reports. It's more than simply stating an act of terrorism occurred. The terrorist designation goes beyond groups violating a country's constitution, for example. So we also focused on national level designations. And we found that most, if not all countries we researched had some form of sanctioning to implement the UN sanctions on al-Qaeda and ISIS. And furthermore, some countries have processes for commitments to designation lists issued by international bodies such as the European Union's list of terror groups. We also have a list of their own for designating terrorist groups. We don't list them as having a national designation list. We also chose to identify types of designations such as prescription and criminalization of membership support, entry provisions to limiting individuals tied to a designated group. Asset focus sanctions as outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 1373, asset freezes or other seizure of assets short of a criminal conviction and unknown enforcement measures or other. And then last, we have domestic entities coded if countries designate an entity, or if we found the group has a substantial military, organizational or governing presence inside the country we researched. So as far as UN resolutions, we focused on driving our analysis based on the following. UN Security Council Resolution 1373, which passed in 2001. Among other things discusses terrorist financing, and notice that all states shall take a range of actions, such as criminalizing the possession and collection of funds quote, by their nationals or in their territories with the attention that the funds should be used, or in the knowledge that they are to be used in order to carry out terrorist action. And so states maintain their own lists of whose assets should be frozen and that's something that I think is really important for us to focus on. Then in 2005 Security Council Resolution 1624, condemn the glorification of terrorism and called on states to prohibit incitement of terrorist violence. Our analysis also draws from 1999 Security Council Resolution 1267, which designated Al Qaeda Taliban Osama bin Laden, or persons and entities associated with them with committing all UN members to freeze those groups and individuals assets. In 2011, UN SCR 1989, separated the Al Qaeda and Taliban lists, due to the Taliban's reconciliation with the government of Afghanistan at the time. So some members of the Taliban were believed to have rejected extremist or terrorist ideologies of Al Qaeda, and supported a possible peaceful resolution of the continuing conflict in Afghanistan, which we know things have changed since then and will also be addressing today. In 2015 UN SCR 2253 extended sanctions to individuals and entities tied to ISIS. And then in 2022 UN SCR 2624 expanded prior sanctions and referred to Yemen's Houthi rebels as the quote Houthi terrorist group and quote. So there are other sanctioning regimes by the UN that apply to groups considered by the United States and other countries to be terrorist organizations such as Al Shabaab. So one example of this is UN SCR 751 and related resolutions aimed at sanctioning entities quote, engage or providing support for access threaten the peace, security or stability of Somalia, including access threaten the peace and reconciliation process in Somalia, or obstruct, undermine or threaten the federal government of Somalia. Amazon UN son by force, unquote, along with a variety of more specific inclusion criteria. So, however, Al Shabaab is not listed on the Al Qaeda and ISIS sanctions list. The UN General Assembly adopted its global counter terrorism strategy in 2006, calling on member states to have more collaborative efforts in combating the spread of terrorism, and that plan is reviewed and updated every two years. And so, with all of these UN resolutions, it helped to kind of frame the approach that we were taking to make sure that we were taking language to help specify, what does it mean to have a designation, what does it not mean and David's going to give us a really good example of some of the highlights from the report, and he'll be able to super dive in our findings. So thanks, David. Thank you. Thanks. So as Melissa mentions, I'm going to run through some of the key findings and then what they might say about the broader destination landscape. We'll go pretty quickly through these and then hopefully we can discuss in more detail. So, as mentioned our report looks at 196 countries, focused on the question of disease countries have national destinations. Our first finding that was spoke quite well about is that destinations are complex and there's variation at multiple levels across these this is both a key finding but also a limitation to the application and use of this data that should be kept in mind. There's no variation, I mean, variation over who is designated, but also variation in the process. As Melissa mentioned, whether the groups or any participation in the group is criminalized that's a higher level through sort of acid freezes and sanctions down to whether it's just symbolic of organizing or structuring intelligence sharing. There's also differences in the extent of executive control over the process differences in the extent of weather information on destinations are public, or even whether the legal systems that is making organizations nationally is a solid legal system or is run a little bit by Royal or other absolute dicta. Some countries have multiple authorities here in the United States we have to foreign terrorist organization was which a lot of people focus on, but there's also a designated global terrorist was and sanctions run largely by Treasury there's also a terrorist exclusion list specific to immigration policy. Some countries also use authorities that are not specifically about terrorism, and sometimes this authorities blur into pretty specific approaches that then use them and frame it as a counter terrorism tool. With those cautions we found that 60 countries appear to have some kind of national designation beyond their commitments to the UN sanctions or their regional body commitments that's 31% the sample. The sanctions appear to have more architecture, in particular North America, although that's just the US and Canada in our regional schema, and South Asia have high rates of architecture. Others have part of less, we found very little in Sub-Saharan Africa, very little in Oceania, accepting New Zealand and Australia, and very little although some in the rest of the Americas, South America, Central Americans and Caribbean. The issues are report up spring to light it's existence of significant global differences over destination. This occurs, even within peaceful and largely integrated regions, for example, the European Union was historically split on whether to designate as well. And even more recently after they designated the armed wing, they're continued to be splits within the blog, and you're more generally over whether to designate only the armed wing or parts of his law or to designate it in its entirety. Even the United States and Canada disagreements Canada has designated the proud boys while the United States has not. Part of the reason for that is that the United States granularly avoids designating or calling domestic groups terrorist organizations, although, as we know it in the paper and has been discussed. There's been some politicization and signs that some people are not happy with that. However, that puts the United States at odds with many of the other countries, at least those that have national destinations. Our count is that 72% of those that have a national destination, according to our criteria, have also designated a group that is largely a domestic place. They're also geopolitical disputes returning to Haslam, Syria and Iran viewed the group as legitimate and indeed important for their national security strategies, and Russia does not designate the group with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood Saudi Arabia the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have all done destinations regarding the group and other linked groups to the Muslim Brotherhood. And that puts that ties into a broader competition between those countries and countries like Qatar, Turkey, and others that have more friendly relations with the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim Brotherhood affiliated groups. The US and Iran have both designated parts of each other's governments as terrorist organizations. The US did this for the first time with its foreign terrorist organization list under Trump, designating the IRGC. The Soleimani assassination then caused a surge in Iranian reaction to that and a series of Iranian sanctions on US government and other Americans as well as others that have blamed for this assassination, or stopped to connect to it. This is also a prior history in 2007, Iran passed a non binding resolution calling US forces in the Middle East terrorists, and that was partly tied to the geopolitical competition, but was also partly an explicit tit for tat dispute with the US over destinations and framed as reaction to calls for the United States to designate the IRGC at that time. The UK appears to be considering a destination of its own, as well as others are considering it, and there's a tie into destination debates in Yemen around the Houthi group, which we can discuss later. There's also been a push among many to designate groups tied to the far right or white supremacist groups that was energized by a wave of white supremacist attacks including globally for example in Christchurch. This includes the one six events here in DC. There has been an effect, we identified 12 groups that appear to be designated in some form, and five countries that have made such destinations as part of this generalized push. However, institutionalization is limited, especially beyond the five eyes countries. There are also some side cases we discussed in the report. So other limits there's been a connection to geopolitical disputes, specifically into conflict and war in Ukraine that we address how that has played out a bit in the report. And there's also questions about the character of the threat, and whether it's this kind of destination is really responsive to what many see as a threat defined by loan actors, or small cells and not the kind of groups that at least traditionally have been seen as describing destination questions at the group level. Finally, we have to look for the potential for change. As Melissa mentioned, and we'll discuss more to the collapse of the Afghan government ball into us withdrawal it's really reshaped a whole range of sanctions questions raising number of issues. And that January 6 really drive sort of a push for further destinations. Well, we just saw similar riots and events in Brazil. We may see, or we may not see further spending out of legal architecture from that or any future similar events. And finally, as we were writing and finalizing this report, Somalia began to spin out a series of executive statements, establishing legal architecture, or at least statements of legal architecture, regarding Al Shabaab in a way that did not appear to really exist in the same way before. And with that I turn it up. Thank you, David ambassador. Thank you all mute. Apologies I should have learned to get that right. Thank you. Thanks for including me in this fascinating discussion. This is an important report on a topic that needs to be reexamined at a time when the easy post 911 consensus on counterterrorism is being challenged in terms of where the main threat comes from. In terms of international common purpose on tackling it. And in terms of resourcing the effort. I think this background gives me experience of both policy and practice of counterterrorism first with the British government, and then with the UN. I'll try to offer insights from those perspectives rather than a more general commentary on this excellent assessment which Melissa and David have already covered so well. I will briefly highlight some aspects of the UN approach to CT, the monitoring team which I coordinated until July is mandated by Security Council resolutions to assess and support sanctions on ISIL Al Qaeda and the Taliban. There's a kind of a cousin body in the UN called the counterterrorism executive directorate, which works to a different Security Council committee and set of resolutions. It works on a much wider set of terrorist groups and issues than the monitoring team does. Then you have the UN Office of Counterterrorism the largest UN CT agency, but it doesn't come under the Security Council and so it has different governance. I don't have time to go into this now but we'll be happy to say more if I asked about mandates and how this UN CT architecture works. I will instead just offer a few reflections to help stimulate the discussion that Peter will moderate. The report mentions the 1267 regime and alludes to its widespread automatic implementation, at least in legal terms, because member states have a mechanism to comply and demonstrate compliance. This is particularly striking in the EU where the stroke of a pen in New York leads to almost instantaneous implementation in 27 countries, but in terms of practical impact, how many bank accounts are frozen, how many terrorists are disrupted, how much financial institutions and other private entities invest in total compliance. Neither 1267 nor any other UN sanctions regime has anything like the international impact of US Treasury sanctions. Now the report highlights definitional issues, including the lack of an agreed international definition of terrorism. The great strength of the 1267 list is that it doesn't need a definition. It is group specific and ISIL and al-Qaeda represents such a brutal nihilistic streak of terrorism that it is easy to reach international agreement on taking measures against them. ISIL has no friends al-Qaeda very few. As I said, there is much OCT, CTED and others can and do contribute on counterterrorism. As was famously said of pornography, we hesitate to define terrorism, but we know it when we see it. I wanted to clarify a couple of points in the report. It is not beyond the scope of 1267, because it is an established and proudly self-avowed affiliate of al-Qaeda, and its leader is one of the top five global leaders of al-Qaeda. But the convention has been to deal with it under the Somalia sanctions regime, partly because that has a humanitarian carve out. We're just in to see what happens now that Resolution 2664, which was passed last month, has introduced a humanitarian exemption to other UN sanctions, including 1267. Regarding the ISIL provinces in Africa, we should be clear that they were already sanctioned by the UN, US and others because of their association with ISIL. The individual designation is of more symbolic than practical value, and there is no consensus on exactly how far to pursue these individual designations. Sometimes because member states are reluctant to highlight that they have a nice and problem. Sometimes because the groups themselves crave the implicit respect and recognition. Those extremist bandits and thugs may well take such recognition as a badge of honor. It can become a self fulfilling prophecy that ultimately attracts money, resources and foreign terrorist fighters to that group. The UN Council CT resolutions are sometimes described negatively as imposed legislation by Security Council Fiat member states are keen to comply, especially with chapter seven resolutions. But these resolutions are not always drafted with the legal precision would be required to draft laws in a member state, and the business tempo of the Security Council takes no account of member state capacity to implement. That's rise to human rights and other concerns around compliance with competing legal obligations. My view is that the Security Council needs to be more cautious in drafting new CT resolutions. Of course, Security Council dynamics are a crucial ingredient in this. That is a new, but also an old consideration. It was no easier to achieve Security Council unanimity before the 1990s than it is now. We may therefore come to regard the heyday of CT resolutions from 1999 to 2017 as an exceptional era. The report mentions the financial action task force and I would just highlight how extraordinarily effective that body has been in its field. The weakness is its limited membership, but it has much wider impact. It has a working definition of terrorism, and it has a lack of squeamishness about criticizing member states performance on CT and a track record of driving behavior change. This is worthy of closer study for lessons learned. Next, it will be important to sustain international consensus on CT, especially at a time when other priorities, geostrategic or environmental are asserting themselves. The report points out that this consensus is already fragile, indeed absent in the case of many strains of terrorism, far right extremism or white supremacist terrorism, or ethnically or religiously motivated, or motivated by xenophobia or racism intolerance or religious belief. These are sometimes abbreviated to ERM or XRIRB. These are a particularly vexed area, as the report indicates. Controversy over terminology reflects controversy over definition, and an issue that arouses U.S. domestic sensitivities over the proud boys and Russian sensitivities over Ukraine is hardly likely to see consensus action in the Security Council anytime soon. So let's stick to what we can agree on. If a regime like 1267 is working reasonably well, it makes sense to evolve it incrementally. The 2664 humanitarian experiment will need careful monitoring. As for Chapter 7 resolutions on new threats, those will only be driven by seismic events with strategic international impact. The white supremacists or XRIRB terrorists have not yet had their 911 moment or their so-called caliphate moment, and the issue will elude the Security Council until they do. None of which prevents OCT, CTED, and others from continuing, expanding, and improving the excellent work that they already do to build member state CT capacity relevant to all of the terrorist threats that member states face. Thank you. Thank you, Ambassador. I also wanted to draw attention to Breonna Kiblak, who was one of the co-authors of this report. A couple of questions for the ambassador to kick things off with. You were ambassador in Yemen, you had to obviously think pretty hard about the Houthi problem. So what are the constituencies that want to designate the Houthis as a terrorist group? And if you are willing to answer this, I mean, is that a reasonable kind of conclusion? And after all, sending Iranian-made drones into Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates on the other hand, both of those countries have sort of at once to time or another have both sent their armed forces into Yemen. So how do you land on all that? I'd say it was a complicated discussion that led to the Security Council resolution that was referred to in the report, but nevertheless it was, it was agreed. And I think this was brought about by the increasingly reckless attacks that the Houthis were launching on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. And actually, you know, as I said, with terrorism, you know it when you see it, however difficult the definition is. And there was a level, I think, of recklessness about potential civilian casualties, sort of reckless economic damage, damaged infrastructure, which potentially to international aviation stability and security that I think drove that consensus, which led to the resolution. That said, it wasn't easy to reach. It probably would have been reached sooner if the Houthis had been a little bit more indiscriminately reckless sooner. It's more that they behave like a militia that is fighting for control of territory in Yemen, rather than a terrorist group that's trying to bother bother their neighbors. The less likely it is that sort of international consensus can be reached against them. And of course it's obviously true that any any group that is, rather than I saw sort of a nihilistic death cult. If it's if it's more of a sort of a state sponsored group that straddles militia activity and terrorism, like the Houthis, then again, it will always be harder to achieve Security Council unanimity unanimity against it. Is there a sort of slippery slope problem which, which, you know, I'll be the advocate for that, which is in the report mentions across the Trump administration designated the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran. David mentioned that the British are contemplating graphs designating the group, and then also Iran has sort of done a tit for tat with elements of the United States. The Houthis themselves are an interesting because they are the de facto government of much of Yemen. You know what point does this sort of degenerate into because I mean terrorism is this kind of commonly understood is by non state actors against civilians now there may be a state component which is supporting that but when you start designating elements of a government are we sort of on a slippery slope where what we're talking about is so capacious that it becomes unmanageable. Yeah, I think it's it's a very fair warning Peter. I mean of course this has always been the case that periodically member states will accuse one another of support for terrorism or accuse one another of outright terrorism. And I think you have to be careful with definitions here, and I agree that those kind of accusations inevitably drive retaliatory accusations which may just muddy the waters and make things more difficult. At the same time, there's certain types of activity where it's difficult to refrain from making the accusation. So, I don't want to preach on this, but it's one of the reasons that I said in my opening remarks that, you know, where you have a sort of a ring fenced set of sanctions like the ones that apply against Al Qaeda and the and I saw. And they're sort of trying to hold on to that as a single regime and evolve it with international consensus. And now just quickly mentioned the point of the humanitarian point again. This is another point where you've got terrorist groups that control territory you mentioned the Houthis in Yemen, you could equally have mentioned the Taliban in Afghanistan. Taliban obviously not treated as a terrorist group by the UN but they are treated as terrorist group by a number of member states. Of course, then you've got humanitarian groups needing to talk to the de facto authorities to gain access and access and to deliver humanitarian assistance. And so you run into difficulties over over that sort of you know how how you how you indemnify that kind of activity against the accusation that is supporting the terrorist group. Yeah, just a clarification on that. So this 2664 resolution in the UN, which I'm getting, which passed last month allows member states to deal with the Taliban, even though the UN, you were running the monitoring cell. And in your most recent report, I think you said 41 of the cabinet or sub cabinet were designated not as terrorists but as threatening to the piece of Afghanistan. So does this carve out allow it make it easier from other states or NGOs to deal with the Taliban de facto government. So the carve out doesn't, I mean it does apply to 1988 but it wasn't needed for 1988 which is the Taliban sanctions regime, because the United Nations Security Council had already passed resolution to 615, which was passed much sooner after the Taliban took de facto power in Afghanistan. And that was a resolution that specifically provided that exemption in the case of humanitarian delivery in Afghanistan. So 2664 was passed for the full range of UN sanctions. And in terms of the conversation we're having, it would be more relevant, for example, to humanitarian delivery in Idlib, where the controlling authority is Hayat Tahrir Hashem, which is a 1267 sanctioned group. And part of Al Qaeda effectively or they've had it back and forth but Al Qaeda, let's say. Exactly. So just picking up on some of those, Melissa and David. So, and the report points out the Russians have designated the as of battalion which is now the as of regiment which is now part of the Ukrainian army. And then, you know, there's also been just some discussion of the wagon group being designated as a terrorist group it does not clear how far that has gone. But do Melissa do any thoughts on on those designations or potential designations. I think it makes for a really complicated scenario because like we've talked about with some of these other groups depending on what the geopolitical aspect is with different nations and their affiliations with them or the work that they've done with them, having some designations of specific groups makes it very complicated. And so there's not really a one size fits all process for some of these things, especially when it comes to different aspects with real time conflict like we're seeing in Ukraine and Russia, having these different groups saying well, I'm going to designate this group because it's going against what my geopolitical wishes are in the region. It's a very interesting piece as it comes about I think the other piece about having different groups that may have been more. I would say more right leaning and in this particular context, and having some, I guess, complicated. I'm trying to say this very politically correct, but just, I guess questionable tactics and things that they've done. But now having those groups be affiliated with kind of a movement in Ukraine, for example, to be at the front lines of everything. I guess tactics change ideas change and so what makes it challenging I would say is, when you designate a group and then you see that things are changing in real time in terms of their focus. And to walk that back becomes a very complicated process and I think in the United States we're seeing that a lot as well to between one administration to the next. What does it who designates a group and who pulls it back kind of a thing so I think the long and short of it is it's really complicated depending on the context of the time and who's involved and what their end goal is. David highly politicized decisions, I mean, I get and I'm also to the ambassador I mean I guess the UN ISIS and al Qaeda everybody can agree on almost entirely that these are bad groups but then, once you get below that it's more complicated so David on the Wagner group what do you think will happen or what's brewing on that issue. I'm not sure what's growing on that but I agree on both the politicization question, and also the complicatedness, and I think we've seen sort of the early signs that these things can trip up policymakers. So, in the paper we side that there was, I think, a very relatively low importance instance where the Japanese have a sort of analytical political or public facing product that's just, here's a bunch of terrorist groups. It's not at least according to them tied to any material law enforcement aspect it's just public info. And they went back and according to statements we saw edited that regarding the as of which then got picked up by various Russian affiliated or news and news that's sort of aligned with it, pointing out that backtracking. And you saw some similar wavering in the US domestic sphere. And I think there's a way in which at first watch many of these far right groups in the US context there's an assumption that, well these wouldn't have any geopolitical consequences it's not like these there's no aspect and I. I think that that can be misleading and some of these cases, either clearly do have connections into larger conflicts, or they can suddenly become part, which is a little bit of the like interlinking that. A little clarification about this because I mean my understanding is, you know, it's complicated in the United States for these domestic terrorist groups are right wing extremist groups because the designation comes from primarily through the State Department and their foreign terrorist organizations and so while it would be a crime for me to try and join ISIS or send money to ISIS. It would be quite within my first amendment rights to be a member of Proud Boy I might, if I committed a crime like the Proud Boys who are being charged with seditious conspiracy that's a different matter but you know you can't, you can't criminalize because of the first amendment, joining one of these groups in the United States in a way that you criminalize joining or attempting to join or supporting or providing material support to a group like ISIS is that correct. Basically, I think the standard interpretation is that there is no or very limited authority to target these structures against domestic groups. I think it's clear necessarily that you could, there's no way you could interpret it that way and of course, as an American you can be charged if there's the foreigners of the organization which perhaps open some space and we saw that with the Trump administration's attempt to put Antifa on the terrorist exclusion list which raised a whole range of questions, both is this meaningfully an organization, which I think it's not, or at least the way they were bringing it didn't refer to a meaningful organization, but also the domestic question but that didn't stop them from at least floating that up. But I think that is sort of an issue and you see these calls for domestic designation and then the challenges around it. I think also we see this question of, is, are these even groups and a lot of questions or is it useful to conceive of them as groups, which we cite a lot of documents that raises that concern when they went and tried to talk through what can be done on the right wing extreme right wing side and what exists already. Well, let me ask the ambassador question about that because one of the big issues and I, if anybody in the audience has questions please put them in the Slido and I'll just give them to be to our panelists as they come in. So the Muslim Brotherhood is a group. It's also a movement. I mean you can be a Muslim brother without, you know, it's, it sort of depends on which country you're in and a lot of others so the criminalize the designation by the Saudis and then of course in Turkey you've got to be Muslim Brotherhood government to some degree in elements of the Jordanian Parliament and Kuwait and of course Qatar is until recently, you know, the one of the leaders of the movement of the cleric who just recently died was living in Qatar so how does this all. What are the real world implications of all this and the kind of because part of the one of the reasons we're trying to do this is trying to explain to as much as possible this is really complicated. And obviously this has big implications for social media companies for people doing business in these countries potentially for a whole wide range of things and of course for politics or how do you, how do you sort of untangle, for instance the Muslim Brotherhood and the real world world implications of these some groups being banned or not banned depending on which country you're in. Yeah, it's a great question and then it's been it's been a very complicated thing for people to deal with over the years, and you'll remember very well you know the sort of controversy that was generated by the number of Muslim Brotherhood aligned leaders present in the United Kingdom, which gave the United Kingdom a bad reputation with a number of Middle Eastern partners. And that's not entirely been dealt with. I think the, the, the point that the UK would make on this is that you know you can't likely designate a group as a terrorist group you have to be absolutely clear that they fulfill certain criteria as a terrorist group. The only view was that the Muslim Brotherhood did not fulfill those criteria was that the Muslim Brotherhood was a dissident group or, you know, an opposition group. Then you get into this interesting point whereas whereas the overlap between extremist ideology and violent terrorism, and that that that I think is where you get the real sort of nuance about where you draw that line, and you can really have a debate about this, you know I can, I have some sympathy with some of the critics of the, you know, the of the UK on this but I also understand why the UK takes the position that it does. You also get into some interesting intricacies in places like Yemen where some of the government forces are aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, some of the government forces are aligned with Salafism. And that can create different tensions within the coalition with the Saudi with the Saudis on the one hand with the Emirates on the other hand. So this is not an easy thing to deal with it's one of the reasons why I think it's quite important to have a high bar for saying this is unquestionably a terrorist group. And there I do see one point I want to make is is I see an inherent benefit to international peace and security of having some level of Security Council agreement on this point. It's one of the one of the great things about the 1267 sanctions regime is it brings the Security Council together. And very little they can agree on when they're that daggers drawn on so many other issues. They nevertheless can sit down and agree on designating or taking measures against ISIL or al-Qaeda, and that creates a habit of negotiation and compromise, which I think is valuable. Yeah. Ambassador Melissa wanted to ask you a couple of questions on these points. Thank you. So, Ambassador I just wanted to circle back just to the beginning of something that you had said in your opening remarks, you had mentioned I think member state capacity and then legal obligations that make it complicated for you and resolutions to be implemented. So I just wanted to comment on that and then see if you could expand a little bit if you don't mind. I was thinking that you know one of the trickiest things is for the UN setup is writing a resolution that can be passed in such a way that you know voting member states are going to sign on to it. It's really a delicate dance of the UN and it's kind of like one of the beautiful things but also one of the most complicated things is because you have to accommodate these various cultural geopolitical transnational factors creating resolutions that speak to all of the other states. Do you have anything to respond to that. I just wanted to make a comment about it. Yeah, I mean I think it's, I think what you make an important point and you know, of course the governments engaged in the Security Council these are serious governments and they're seriously well resourced. The process of drafting and passing a Security Council resolution is a, it's a solemn process and I don't want to trivialize that at all it's it's hugely impressive to watch it happening. But, nevertheless, the Security Council has a rhythm of business it has a certain number of issues it has to get through. It has limited time. And once you enter the negotiation phase, you're going to have trade offs, and those trade offs will be checked with capitals and they will be they will have all of the legal checks done. But you're still unlikely to end up with a draft that has the level of thoroughness that you would get in a carefully legally drafted domestic piece of legislation. And so there is a there is a tension there. You pass a resolution, and it imposes an obligation, you know, a good example would be, would be the resolutions that deal with how you address foreign terrorist fighters who traveled to fight with, you know, on the side of the war. Now those resolutions that were passed by the, by the UN, they're very good resolutions and they were needed, they were needed to provide some kind of international thought leadership on this new problem, which governments have not dealt with before, and have been rejected because they weren't expecting their nationals to jump up and go and fight in a foreign conflict, and all of the things that followed from that. And I actually think those are rather good resolutions but it is interesting that even now years later, years since the first of them was passed, you know, many member states are still not fully in compliance with them. And so what you're doing is you're, you're, you're, you're putting member states in a position where they struggle because of their state capacity, but also because of the, you know, countervailing obligations. You know, this is a, this is a very common discussion within the UN is, is counterterrorism versus human rights obligations versus versus human rights versus humanitarian accesses obligations and other rule of law considerations. You can set up tensions in that area. They're not insuperable tensions but I think, I think all of that points to the wisdom of the Security Council, avoiding hyperactivity in this area. I think that's actually a fantastic point, because you have all these different UN entities that each have at the end of the day it's the same goal. Regardless of whether or not it's coming from a counterterrorism perspective, it's coming from a peace building perspective, you know, regardless of what that angle is the end goal is the same preventing violence. But I think the point that you made about foreign terrorist fighters returning is actually a great example because you have a lot of states that have very specific rules about not allowing people to come back. And then who is the burden on right so when they get to the border and they can't go. Then they may end up in a place where there's not enough infrastructure to support them in the way that they would have been able to come back in that capacity. And then you have other states that have a very different approach and they want to bring them back in, put them kind of through a new process of coming back into the culture, re assimilating if you will, and it's just very different approaches so I'm really glad you brought that up that that's a great point. So following up on that, you know so the whole camp, which has got tens of thousands of women and children, many of whom are sort of affiliated with ISIS and some shape or form I mean, it seems an ambassador, no. You know, some Francis taken a handful back and the Iraqis and Syrians have taken some back but I mean right now what's the state of play that you think. Well, it's gradually improving. But it's not improving quickly enough. I mean the numbers in alcohol significantly down on where they were a couple of years ago. And in terms of the sort of the main contributors to that development I mean I think the Iraqis did deserve a special mention because you know they're having to deal with a vast internally displaced problem of their own. And yet they are also accepting people back from Syria so I think they deserve a good deal of credit for that. I think the Kazakhstan and some of the other Central Asian countries have been leaders in this. And it's true that Western Europe. I don't want to, it's not just Western Europe and it's not all of Western Europe but, but you know Western Europe has been hesitant in this area. The bottom is that it's a it's an unprecedented issue and issues without precedent, then are slow to resolve themselves, or to be resolved. And so there's been a lot of international effort that's gone into this, but there remain a lot of complications that cause people to say well this is difficult and we can't move too quickly. And often it's domestic political considerations where you actually have a, you know, politicians afraid that they bring one person back and it goes wrong. It could cause them severe electoral difficulties. I think what what the monitoring team has always sought to emphasize on this point is that the, the trouble that is being stored up by not proactively addressing this issue is much greater than the trouble if you do proactively address it. And obviously you know we're now several years on from the fall of the so called caliphate. You know if you're dealing with somebody who is 14 years old, you could have dealt with them when they were seven. You've got a whole new complicated intractable set of issues. And that's why we've always said, please, you know, we have to get we have to get on the front foot with this issue. And, you know, many members of the international community deserve a lot of credit for doing exactly that. But the process still needs to be accelerated. Okay, we have some audience questions so first one directed yet you ambassador from nasrana use society for the voice of America. We discussed a little bit of this but millions of girls are being denied their very basic rights, etc. You know, where does the US and the UN stand on the issue of sort of dealing with the Taliban given the fact that they're the de facto government. And that there is a sort of massive humanitarian crisis which is sort of brewing in addition to all the other problems the Taliban have inflicted on the country. And it's a huge and intractable problem. It's difficult for the UN it's difficult for all of the member states who are dealing with it. We often would look at it from the point of view of the Taliban's compliance with its obligations under the Doha chords, you know, to ensure that there was no potential projection of threat from Afghan soil against the international community. I think the US operation that killed a man as a wahari last summer in Kabul proves that the Taliban were not in compliance. We the monetary team has regularly called them out for that and they've always maintained a sort of a non credible denial of this. The point is that this sits alongside other issues like human rights issues with female education and and so many other things that they are doing. We mustn't lose sight of the fact that we have leverage and we should use leverage they should not be allowed to just wait this out until the international community loses interest. In the conversation people have with the Taliban they should be saying what about female education what about the relationship with terrorist groups. And the last thing I say about this though is that nobody I think can realistically say that the Taliban has to be removed I mean the international community has just been through a long expensive painful experiment, which ended up with the Taliban in power again. So somehow or other you have to find a way of ensuring that that doesn't need to unless unnecessary humanitarian suffering. And my advice and this is the advice I used to give it when talking on 1988 issues in the UN is look to the neighbors on this, because neighbors have no choice. If you're Pakistan, if you're Iran, if you're Turkmenistan if you're China, if you're Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, you have no choice, but to figure out some modus operandi with the people across the border. So, it's the important thing is to put those neighbors in the forefront of how you exert pressure on the Taliban, and what concessions you make in order to drive behavior change and to cope with the situation on the ground inside the country. This is a question from Ramayana Campbell, which is, what about what about the possibility of us domestic designation of multinational far right groups that have a US presence, like the proud boys. Melissa, do you want to take that. I think. Sorry, could you say that one more time. So basically the question is, you know, I mean some of these right wing groups have an international presence. Yeah. I mean there were some Americans who whenever sees for training with far right groups and so it does that open a window, the Trump administration through its credit designated the Russian imperial movement. That was a group that had, I think I believe it attracted some Americans so does that open up a door a bit on this question of designation of far right groups by the United States. I mean I think it could but I, one of the things that we saw in our report is that there's less of a tendency to designate far right groups compared to jihadist groups, and that's across the board I mean David, you know please correct me if I'm wrong. So, I think the hardest thing is I think the point that is actually made within the question is if they don't have kind of international geopolitical aspects to them, then how can we designate them. And then it goes into the, the more complex conversation around us law and domestic terrorism versus international terrorism and all of the nuances to those laws that I think have been debated, debated, of course by international security program and many other reasons, time and time again, which makes it very complicated so I would say theoretically, there is a door open, but based on what we've seen historically, there's this freedom of speech aspect, which kind of reframes everything and it says well it's, it's, it's more civil issues it's not necessarily going to be violence. When we think of terrorism, and kind of writ large. So, I'm not, I'm not even cautiously optimistic about it I would say theoretically the doors open but I'm following what the pattern in the US for example has been historically with designating I don't know how the rest of you feel. I'm not a lawyer. One quick thing to David, you know so there are laws on the books in the United States about you can't just form a militia movement. And those laws have been around for a long time. And so there are, there are laws other than sort of designating numbers terrorist groups which you could use against these kinds of armed groups if they really look like if they begin to behave like a domestic militia. David. I just wanted to say, I think currently that door is sort of shut and I think there's some very good reasons why people have sought to keep that door shut. And it certainly could be opened of people really wanted to, but opening that door comes with a range of consequences, and I think one of the lessons of this paper is that those consequences are often far reaching and may not be immediately visible. But in this particular case, we, I think, know that one of the consequences of trying to shoehorn domestic destinations and, and pushing against the US reticence to designate domestically is that you open the door further to designations that some may not like, for example, Trump's effort to put out to find the exclusion less which was itself sort of a similar way to shoehorn around the legal and social norm prohibitions on designating domestically inside the US. In the last minute, I just another real world question for the ambassador which is, you know, Turkey is blocking Sweden's entry into NATO or making it very hard or as far as I can tell based on the fact that they regard Sweden as being overly permissive to a group that they see as a terrorist group so these kinds of designations have real world implications do you have any thoughts on where the NATO thing will end up with Turkey or is it hard to predict. You know, I'm guessing that the solution will be found I think I think usually that does happen in that in that kind of in that kind of arena. It is an important reminder of the need not to be careless in tossing around allegations of state sponsorship of terrorism because, you know, you can you can see this in so many places that you know these the sort of these sort of tip the tad allegations have been made in so many different member states, usually about, you know, groups that are, you know, fled across a border or, or to a more sympathetic ideological environment where they can thrive. So if you take this to its logical conclusion you run the risk of just having states endlessly at odds with each other about about the fact that they're not completely handing over everybody that that that member state would like to have handed over. And of course there are, you know, particularly if you're talking about a country like Sweden with very strong legal constraints on what the government can do. It seems to me that you don't want to set a bar diplomatic bar that is bound to fail in the courts. Thank you very much, Ambassador Fitton Brown, David Stelman, Melissa Salkverk, and great report and if you would like to access the report it's available at the bottom of your screen. Thank you very much. Thank you.